From the Battlefield to the Negotiating Table
The Russo-Ukrainian War grinds on, with Russia making extremely marginal territorial gains at exorbitant human and materiel cost. But the Russians are inflicting heavy casualties on Ukraine as well. And for the first time in, well, forever, there appears to be at least a glimmer of a possibility of some sort of negotiated settlement. I’ll first discuss the military situation, then the political/diplomatic one, as the last is contingent on the first.
As I’ve written often before, the tactical aspects of the Russian campaign are beyond grotesque. The indiscriminate waste of lives for meager gains and the brutal treatment of Russian soldiers (who now include female criminals released from prisons) transcend even the worst historical precedents, at least in Europe. The senseless slaughters, the callousness of the officers, and the material deprivation the soldiers suffer go far, far beyond the conditions that caused the French army to mutiny in 1917. But no such thing appears in prospect in the Russian army. National mindset/character does matter.
This last week I saw two articles that present an interesting contrast. A WSJ article describes Ukraine’s (very belated) efforts to fortify. Appealing to Clauswitz and the experience of the American Civil War, Naval War College professor James Holmes argues that fixed defensive lines are futile, and hence the odds of victory favor Russia.
On balance, I think the pro-fortification side has the best of the argument. This is primarily because the technological considerations overwhelm the abstract advantage of the attacker identified by Clauswitz, and the inappositeness of the ACW analogy.
“The Offensive” is one of the Clauswitzian principles of war. Indeed, it is usually given pride of place. As Holmes emphasizes, the attacker can choose where to attack and can concentrate his forces, whereas the defender does not know where the attack will come, and must spread out his forces. This imbalance of concentration is most acute when the battlefront is large, as is the case in Ukraine. Hence, Holmes concludes, the advantage lies heavily with Russia.
However, technological conditions can decisively shift the advantage to the defender, even given his ignorance of where a blow will fall. Of course, the Western Front in WWI is the primary example of this.
In that conflict, the extreme limitations on the pace of an advance, the vulnerability of the attackers to fires, and the distance that an attacker could advance dictated by the reliance on infantry (and later, the primitive armor) combined to make breakthroughs almost impossible to achieve. Firepower (artillery and machine guns) attrited an attacking infantry force heavily before it made contact. Even if it was able to take a line of trenches, or even two, exhaustion brought them to a halt. Primitive communications prevented coordination of adjacent units, and made it almost impossible to bring up reserves to the right place to continue an initially successful assault. So at best, an attacker could dent but never break an enemy’s lines.
Even operational surprises, like Verdun in 1916 or the Kaiserschlacht in Flanders and Artois in 1918 eventually petered out far short of their objectives. Only where troop and fortification density was much lower, as on the Eastern Front in say the Gorlice–Tarnów offensive in Poland in 1915, or the Brusilov Offensive in 1916, or Romania in 1916, was it possible for foot and horse-drawn forces to make sustained advances over long distances. And even the first two of those culminated short of achieving victory.
Conditions similar to the Western Front prevail in Ukraine, and indeed, many factors are even more disadvantageous to the attacker. First anti-tank missiles, and then drones and deep strike munitions, have made it impossible for armored and motorized forces to advance to contact without suffering near annihilation. Drones, and especially satellite and electronic intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets provided by the US, make operational and tactical surprise almost impossible. Artillery is more precise and more deadly.
So foot soldiers must advance under continuous enemy observation and fire at a walking pace, and suffer catastrophically as a result.
The only thing that has allowed Russia to advance as much as it has, little though that be and at what cost, is the fact that Ukrainian lines are very thinly manned. Fortifications are the best way to compensate for that lack of manpower.
Since the outset of the war Ukraine as eschewed the construction of dense fortifications throughout the front–something I have criticized since the outset. Indeed, the Ukrainian resistance to fortification persisted even after its 2023 “offensive” failed because it could not penetrate the Surovkin Lines. One should learn from one’s enemy: Ukraine hasn’t.
This is just one item, albeit an important one, in the bill of particulars against Syrsky and Zelensky and their operational conduct of the war.
(As for the ACW analogy, Holmes overlooks the fact that the Union offensive stalled for 10 months at Richmond-Petersburg due to Confederate fortifications there. Also, the Federal’s multiple simultaneous attacks were conducted at the strategic level, a totally different situation from the operational level -situation in Ukraine. Thus, at the operational level–e.g., Petersburg-Richmond–the fortified defensive prevailed despite a huge numerical imbalance between the two sides. That’s a better analogy for eastern Ukraine today).
Is it too late for Ukraine to fortify as it should have years ago? Perhaps. And regardless, until it does, the Russians will continue to advance meter by meter in the bite and hold fashion they’ve employed for the past three campaign season, because Putin has clearly shown he is willing to pay the price that approach entails.
Which brings us to the political/diplomatic situation. Putin has agreed to meet Trump, who is attempting to broker some form of cessation of the conflict. Trump promises to meet Zelensky immediately afterwards.
Now of course, both sides have made irreconcilable demands. Putin demands complete control over Ukraine’s eastern provinces (which they have almost, but not completely, captured). Zelensky says not one bit of Ukrainian soil will pass to Russia.
But of course they are going to say that. The question is how willing–and able–they are to adhere to those positions. This depends crucially on their assessments of what will happen if the war drags on.
Putin has consistently expressed bravado and a certainty of victory. He has wagered that the disproportionate populations and economies of the two combatants give him a decisive advantage. He claims the Russian economy has withstood sanctions, and can withstand anything more the west throws at him.
The reality is somewhat different. The rate of losses is not sustainable. This will be especially true if, finally throwing up his hands at Putin’s obstinacy, Trump increases the flow of military equipment to Ukraine. As for the economy, it has become extremely unbalanced, with likely unsustainable expenditures on the war. Russia’s fiscal situation is extremely parlous. The civilian economy is suffering, and although the aforementioned national character may cause Russians to bear these privations more stoically than other nationalities would, war weariness will inevitably grow (as it did in Russia in 1917). Russian industry, particularly its oil refining industry–a vital prop to the war effort and the economy generally–has suffered considerable damage from Ukrainian drone strikes.
Russia and those who believe in the inevitability of Russian victory point to GDP figures. Even overlooking the dubious nature of official Russian statistics (not that US official statistics are that great these days), hyperactive military production combined with a suffocating civilian economy cannot go on forever. The example of War Socialism under Ludendorff and Hindenberg in WWI Germany comes to mind. It achieved prodigies, then collapsed in social chaos.
For his part, Zelensky has to consider the fraught military situation. Yes, Ukraine is holding on, but the personnel issues in particular are also not sustainable.
The war of attrition has continued because each side thinks it can hold out one more day and one soldier longer. As long as they continue to think that way, Trump will not succeed.
It ultimately comes down to what leverage Trump has. The very fact that Putin is willing to meet suggests that he has some with the Russian. The meeting has come to pass only after an exasperated Trump threatened to impose far more draconian sanctions on Russia, most notably efforts to throttle oil sales to India and China. That Trump is deadly serious about this is demonstrated by the fact that relations with India have been severely ruptured due to Modi’s refusal to accede to Trump’s demands.
If the conditions of the Russian economy and fisc are as shaky as I believe, Putin has to be seriously concerned that Trump getting serious about sanctions would collapse his ability to sustain the war.
Trump obviously has much more leverage over Zelensky. Ukraine survives at the sufferance of the US.
So I conclude that Trump has considerable leverage over both sides, and that this makes a deal possible, if not highly likely. Putin has to know that the US will bear little cost from imposing large costs on Russia, and again, the hardball with India (“oh, you don’t like 25 percent tariffs? Well, here’s 50 percent then, asshole”) demonstrates that Trump is deadly serious now, whereas I don’t think Putin thought he was prior to now. Unless Putin is living in Dictator Dreamland (which is not inconceivable) he knows that his current strategy and tactics are not sustainable for very long, especially if the US ramps up military support for Ukraine. And further, he has to know that every human and materiel casualty in Ukraine weakens him against whom he claims is his real enemy–Nato.
So although I don’t believe that Trump will achieve a miracle next week, or even in the following weeks, I think that next Friday could well represent the beginning of the end. And what will that end look like?
Well, with neither side getting what they are demanding now. Putin will have de facto control over most of eastern Ukraine, and perhaps de jure control over some of it, but he will not have de jure control over all of it as he is demanding. Which means that Ukraine will make territorial concessions. That is, as is the case in every conflict not ended by unconditional surrender, each side will find the outcome distateful.
And what follows? A hot peace/frozen conflict. Korea redux, perhaps.
In suppose that if Slavophobes exist then they must be enjoying this war. It brings demographic disaster for Russia and calamity for Ukraine. Still, it and the precursor years made the Bidens rich – there’s always a silver lining, eh?
I can see why some people trace the start of the affair to the Clinton administration breaking the USA’s promise not to extend NATO eastwards. Others might point to Khrushchev’s frivolous decision to grant Crimea to the Ukraine. Yet others might delve into the whole of East European history back to the Ottomans, the Mongols, the Vikings, the Huns, the Romans, the Greeks, the Scythians, …
Comment by dearieme — August 10, 2025 @ 7:02 am
I am in blood
Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er.
Shakespeare got it right, as usual. Both sides stuck in the quicksand of the sunk cost fallacy.
Comment by philip — August 10, 2025 @ 4:16 pm
+++the Clinton administration breaking the USA’s promise not to extend NATO eastwards+++
No such promise has ever been made. Enough with this nonsense.
Comment by LL — August 10, 2025 @ 4:28 pm
“No such promise has ever been made”
What makes you think so? The promise was made by US Secretary of State James Baker during the negotiations about German reunification. Of course there was no treaty signed – is that what you mean? It’s OK for the US to behave dishonourably, is it? Only a chump would believe a word said by the US federal government? Maybe the Russkis didn’t understand how underhand a nation overstaffed with lawyers might be?
What, exactly, are you claiming?
Comment by dearieme — August 10, 2025 @ 4:58 pm
“No such promise has ever been made”
What makes you think so? The promise was made by US Secretary of State James Baker during the negotiations about German reunification. Of course there was no treaty signed – is that what you mean? It’s OK for the US to behave dishonourably, is it? Only a chump would believe a word said by the US federal government? Maybe the Russkis didn’t understand how underhand a nation overstaffed with lawyers might be?
What, exactly, are you claiming?
I’ve got it! You are saying that it all depends on what the meaning of “is” is.
Comment by dearieme — August 10, 2025 @ 4:59 pm
Finally, someone able to bash heads together has discovered the will to do what it takes to bring the combatants to the negotiating table. Even if the motivation is to win the Nobel Peace Prize (and thus equal Obomber, whom Trump has never forgiven for mocking him). I doubt anyone has told Trump, but Teddy Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the Treaty of Portsmouth, which brought the Russo-Japanese War to an end, while in the White House.
Continuing the analogy, one reason that it won’t be easy is that Putin and the Russian elite may remember not only what happened to Nicholas II in January 1905 (revolution, following soon after the shock loss of Port Arthur to the Japanese) but also what happened in Japan after the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed (an anti-American uprising, necessitating martial law, as the Japanese people, severely pissed off after having sacrificed so heavily and achieving much less than they had expected from regime propaganda, rose in revolt). How will the Russian populace, after such great sacrifices, respond to being given only ‘half a loaf’ by those dastardly, interfering Yanks?
You can imagine what the reaction will be in Kiev, to news that their huge sacrifices haven’t stopped them from losing a chunk of their country. Is there a plane fuelled and ready to go at the airport?
Someone will have to be the meat in the sandwich. Looks like it is going to be Ukraine. Having been duped by the neocons into standing up to Russia and rejecting both Minsk II and the first peace offering made only two weeks into the war, and suffering real (blood, treasure and land) losses for NATO’s strategic gain, only to be ultimately forced to eat territorial concessions by Washington, who will they trust in the future?
Re. the Ivans being mistreated like livestock, Sean McMeekin’s ‘Stalin’s War’ contains passages about the soldiers forced to fight the Soviets’ Finnish campaign which would melt the hardest heart. Similar in Barbara Tuchman’s ‘The Guns of August’. More and less than century on, and it seems not much has changed.
Comment by Ex-Global Super-Regulator on Lunch Break — August 10, 2025 @ 6:25 pm
@philip – for a pithy and tragic depiction of two men stuck in quicksand and swinging to kill the other, see Goya’s ‘Fight with Cudgels’.
Comment by Ex-Global Super-Regulator on Lunch Break — August 10, 2025 @ 6:28 pm
++What, exactly, are you claiming?++
I claim the well-known and factual, what had been confirmed many times by both Baker and Gorbachev: there was never a promise not to add newmembers to NATO, neither verbal nor written.
What was promised during the negotiations on German unification, was not to move the American troops and offensive weapons to East Germany and to the newly accepted NATO members. And that promise WAS kept – until Russia started actual invasion of Ukraine in 2014.
After all, NATO is a voluntary alliance of souvereign states. Russia has no say on the matter, whether it pleases it or not.
Comment by LL — August 10, 2025 @ 6:49 pm
Apologies for a rather large quote but this excerpt from an Internet discussion puts it quite succinctly:
——————————————————————————————————————-
Sometimes you just have to marvel at how deeply Putin’s propaganda has burrowed into the minds of the Western public — now eating away at them from the inside like mad cow disease. Take, for example, the long-circulating talking point about Russia’s so-called “legitimate concern” over NATO’s “eastward expansion.” I’ve heard this Kremlin garbage — this line about Russia’s legitimate concern about NATO expansion — from people who have zero real interest in foreign policy, folks who couldn’t point out the Netherlands, Germany, Ukraine, or Finland on a world map. And, disturbingly, I’ve heard the exact same Kremlin drivel in conversations about Russia from people who are far more educated and generally keep an eye on what’s happening beyond America’s borders. Sadly, when talking points are dressed up to look like formal logic but are actually crafted with demagogic tricks, audiences tend to take them as unquestionable truths. As a result, no one even bothers to think about the obvious: NATO is not a lump of rising dough or mold on bread that just “expands” all by itself.
NATO is, first and foremost, an alliance of countries that once made a collective decision to defend themselves against the advance of the communist totalitarian plague from the USSR. Today, it’s an organization of nations that simply refuse to live and think under the dictates of all manner of aggressive totalitarian regimes — led first and foremost by today’s Russia — the USSR’s successor state now ruled by a former small-time KGB thug, Putin, and a gang of outright criminals, human predators, and medieval-minded degenerates who have seized power and resources in the largest country on Earth, with a disproportionately small and backward population for such a vast territory (for your information, in case you didn’t know, over 30% of its people in Russia still relieve themselves in wooden outhouses in their villages). For them, even in the 21st century, it’s perfectly “normal” to poison political opponents — both at home and abroad.
So NATO’s so-called “expansion” is, in reality, the ESCAPE of newly freed nations away from the yoke of a brain-rotted, collapsing Russian Empire — which, it must be said, has managed to become the most backward and pathetic of all the world’s empires. And you don’t have to look far for proof of this ESCAPE: just take a look at how Sweden and Finland practically sprinted, side by side, to catch the last NATO train when Putin finally lost his mind and launched a full-scale war in Europe in the 21st century — after first pumping obscene amounts of cash into buying the favor of corrupt politicians, shady elites abroad, and into pouring propaganda filth into the heads of Western audiences with slogans like “Russia’s legitimate concern over NATO expansion.” So go on about “NATO expansion” — Putin’s ass is what’s expanding, if you bother to think about it.
Comment by LL — August 10, 2025 @ 7:03 pm
“And that promise WAS kept – until” … it wasn’t. Yeah. And why 2014? Because the CIA’s 2014 coup in Kiev had been successful.
“puts it quite succinctly”: succinct it ain’t. A lengthy, loutish rant, more like. The pot calling the kettle black.
“a gang of outright criminals, human predators, and medieval-minded degenerates who have seized power and resources in the largest country” … in North America – ah, the Democrats in Congress, the White House, and the ‘Deep State’ with which they work.
“For them, even in the 21st century, it’s perfectly “normal” to” … assassinate political opponents — both at home and abroad, including US citizens.
Hell’s bells, a year ago they almost bagged Trump. But it’s the Russians who are troglodytes.
Comment by dearieme — August 11, 2025 @ 3:15 am
SWP:
Putin w/ continue to ‘tap’ Trump along, as he has previously. It is the same as the phone call that ended w/ the largest missile & drone attack up until that point. TACO w/ fold after a TV style event that he craves w/ him & VVP in a ‘summit.’
Nothing has changed. TACO is far better @ punishing our allies than our enemies. Yes, the exception of the Iranians proves the rule. He saw the the IAF doing amazing work & wanted the USAF to jump in to get some of the credit.
Until he ups the ante w/ some serious weapons shipments — NOT sales, NOT promises, but SHIPMENTS — Putler w/ still believe as he has all along that he can ‘play’ Trump. “I don’t know what ‘happened’ to him.” Seriously?!?!
Nothing changes … until it does. 50% tariffs on the Indians? Pffft.
Sincerely,
VVP
aka Obama-Putin
Comment by Vlad — August 11, 2025 @ 5:41 pm
LL:
Loved the quote.
It helps to know who & what exactly one is dealing with. TACO believes he is dealing w/ a ‘strong’ legitimate leader.
He isn’t.
This is a game show to Trump.
And Putin knows it.
I note how Trump didn’t fire the statisticians responsible for the UPWARD revisions of GDP based on the equally suspect data collection & revisions. Funny how that works, eh?
Vlad,
Former VP Candidate for “I’ll be able to make a better deal after the election,” Obama [in place of slobbering Joe]
Comment by Vlad — August 11, 2025 @ 5:48 pm
But but…the minerals deal!! Wasn’t that supposed to save Ukraine? It’s funny how rapidly that was consigned the bin of BS Trump ‘deals’.
Personally I think there’s zero prospect of anything positive coming from this meeting, save a photo op with a grinning Putin and deluded Trump.
Comment by David Mercer — August 13, 2025 @ 12:11 pm
@deari – I just saw your latest. Jeez, you’ve really fully immersed yourself, haven’t you? Tell me, how much time do you typically spend online every day?
Comment by David Mercer — August 13, 2025 @ 12:18 pm
Two important factors not mentioned here.
1. Ukraine would have collapsed long ago, in fact Putin would have been in Kiev on D+7 as planned were it not for US arms and munitions. The Ukrainians are just as bloody useless at fighting as the Russians. Russians are being killed not by Ukrainians but by the US. Putin’s intransigence is hardly surprising.
2. Ukraine is running out of manpower. They are calling up sixty year olds now. The only reason that Ukraine has any manpower at all is that they closed the borders to stop people escaping. Zelensky is prepared to fight to the last drop of Ukrainian blood, or the second-last anyway, himself excepted. But the people are sick of war.
All the gold in Ukraine is in a bank in the middle of Switzerland, in Volodymyr Zelensky’s name. Why they didn’t let the two Mad Vlads fight it out without involving the rest of the world is a mystery.
Comment by Michael van der Riet — August 13, 2025 @ 9:17 pm
So, Putin got himself the usual “too weaks” extension for bombing kindergartens without sanctions and in return the U.S. military got to kneel before Putin. Win-win, I suppose.
Comment by Ivan — August 17, 2025 @ 2:14 am